All posts for the month June, 2011

Over the past few months, I’ve developed a rather serious crush on the Garbanzo. Every time I think about it I get butterflies in my stomach and my heart skips a beat. Silly, I know, but it can do everything! He’s my superbean! *swoon*

Come to think of it, almost half of the recipes we’ve shared with you contain this miracle of a bean in one form or another. Pigs-in-a-Blanket, Beany Blondies, Elesha’s Triple Punch Biscuits, Simple Seitan even uses garbanzo flour! Endlessly versatile, this legume of legends seems to enhance recipes of every kind, and I’m about to share another. If you’ve grown tired of all the garbanzo blabber, I give you permission to disregard all future chickpea recipes so long as you give this one a chance. You simply MUST.

Unlike the beany blondies, which you’d never guess contain beans upon first taste, the chickpea makes his presence known in this salad quite significantly…TWICE. That’s right, I’m offering you a garbanzo double whammy, the ultimate recipe tribute to chickpeas. Here you’ll see him in hummus form and glazed. I hope I’ve got your attention.

This is not the first time I’ve mentioned Vegan YumYum and it certainly won’t be my last. Every recipe of hers that I’ve made has been a smash hit, and this is no exception. You can see the original here. I followed the recipe fairly closely but unfortunately didn’t have one of the main ingredients on hand: wasabi powder. You simply can’t know how that grieves me, because given how delicious the salad is without it, I can only imagine that the addition of wasabi would make it the most perfect salad on this continent whole earth.

I should mention that I’ve made a lot of hummus this week. I’ve had hummus on pita bread, hummus on sandwiches, hummus on salad, hummus on various vegetable sticks, hummus on finger, hummus pretty much every way imaginable. I have hummus coming out of my ears and I still want more. I’ve been debating whether or not to share my recipe, because it’s just that good. I still haven’t decided. All I’ll say is that for this salad recipe, you’ll need some hummus. You can buy it or make it, whatever’s easier (or tastier).

2. Toast the almonds on low heat until slightly browned and set aside.

3. Sautee broccoli in olive oil on medium heat until tender but still bright green – don’t let it get mushy! Sprinkle with salt when done and set aside.

4. Grill 1/2 can chickpeas in canola oil on medium heat until golden brown. Add the liquid aminos and honey and let simmer until it becomes a sticky glaze. Okay, I’m drooling now.

5. While chickpeas are cooking, chop the greens and shred the carrot.

6. Set aside a small portion of the glazed chickpeas, almonds, and carrot for garnishing and combine everything else. When salad is evenly coated with dressing, garnish with reserved ingredients and serve.

The hubs ate that whole plate by himself!

Besides being chock full of fiber, vitamins, healthy proteins and fats, this salad is scrumptious..King of Salads, even. Try it and see for yourself!

Sounds tasty, right? Well, it is and it’s what I had for lunch this afternoon. Now, I can’t take credit for the idea, because one of my best friends, Kristin, was kind enough to send me the recipe. I didn’t follow it too closely (I’m really bad about following recipes exactly as they are written, even when it’s in my best interest), but I would not have come up with the idea on my own. I am now going to give you my version of it so you can all enjoy them as much as I did.

What you’ll need:

2 large zucchini

1/4 chopped onion (I used red)

1/4 cup diced tomatoes (I used fire roasted canned tomatoes)

1 cup brown rice cooked (you will start out with 1/2 cup dry rice)

1/4 cup gluten powder

2 tablespoon ground flax seed

1 tablespoons minced garlic

2 pinches of ground red pepper (pizza peppers)

Salt and pepper to taste

1 teaspoon salt or seasoned salt (I used Adobo)

Feta cheese (eliminate for vegan version)

First cook the brown rice. I put ½ cup dried brown rice in a pan with 1 cup of water, about a tablespoon of canola oil, and a little bit of salt and brought it to a boil at medium heat. Once some of the water evaporated down a bit, I turned the heat down to low and covered the pan. The rice should be pretty soft for this recipe.

While the rice was cooking, I cut the zucchini lengthwise and scooped out the centers.

Row, row, row your … Wait! Don’t throw out the excess zucchini! Waste not, want not, right? Chop it up until it’s nice and mushy and set aside to use in the filling. You can go ahead and chop your onion now. Hopefully by now, the rice is done cooking.

Now you’re going to mix everything except for the feta cheese and the zucchini boats together in a skillet at medium heat until it thickens up.

This should only take a few minutes, so now you’re ready to put the mixture into the zucchini boats.

Pretty, right? Now all you have to do is sprinkle the feta cheese on top and bake at 375 for about 30 minutes until the zucchini softens and the filling is slightly crisp on top.

The whole idea of hors d’oeuvres is really not as complicated as it sounds. From what I can tell, creating the perfect hors d’oeuvre is a simple, three-step process:

Step 1: Find a disgusting, almost inedible ingredient. For the most successful hors d’oeuvre, the ingredient should be a raw, dead sea creature that ate poop off the sea floor while alive. Best if pickled or whizzed into a fishy paste and served with a cracker and/or olive.

Oysters on crackers. Oyster in French is "huître"...very classy, oui? I can't even begin to imagine how it's pronounced.

Step 2: Serve a very tiny portion of the disgusting ingredient in the middle of a giant plate drizzled with a mysterious, unnamed sauce – preferably brown or mustard yellow.

This is a snail. To eat. Somebody ate that.

Step 3: Combine three words from a French dictionary to come up with an exotic name. Best if it contains at least one apostrophe and a silent letter x. What’s in a name? A good example is the snail above: the moment you call it ‘Escargot’ it immediately transforms from the slimy creature suctioned to the moldy 2×4 in your backyard into a French delicacy available only to the upper-class elite.

An ounce of this Iranian Malossal Caviar will run you about $250, but I can see why! My mouth is watering just looking at that heaping spoonful of rubbery goo balls. If those aren't fish eggs, they're most definitely mosquito larvae.

Easy, right? Disguised as “delicacies” with sophisticated names and elegant presentation, “hors d’oeuvres” are a brilliant way to get people to willingly eat all varieties of snails, fish eggs, clams, lamb tongues, cow stomachs, and fungus. How something so unappetizing could ever be labeled an “appetizer” is beyond me! However, there IS one thing on that highly-questionable list that I absolutely love (the only plant, mind you), and that is fungus – in mushroom form, of course.

I humbly present to you my very first skinnyfat hors d’oeuvre, sans giant plate and mystery sauce.

Champignons Farcis (or, for the less cultured, Stuffed Mushrooms)
Adapted from this recipe…I made only minor changes. All credit to smittenkitchen!

Stuff the mushroom caps with a pile of the stuffing mixture and arrange on a cookie sheet.

Aren't they darling?

Bake for another 15 minutes, or until the outside of the stuffing has slightly browned and crisped.

Good heavens, it looks like someone's taken a bite out of that one in the bottom right corner! Some people just have no self control.

There you have it: Champignons Farcis, a very fancy, very vegan hors d’oeuvre suitable for your next social gathering or mushroom craving! The hubs was a fan. I brought one into the computer room for him to sample, then returned to the kitchen. A minute later he yelled across the house, “I WANT THEM ALL!”. I guess they came out alright.

Have you tried any of our skinnyfat recipes yet? If so, we’d love to hear about the turnout! Keep eating fungus.

My Sundays are normally extremely productive; I do all of the laundry and housecleaning (including mopping…YUCK), as well as cook everything in preparation for the week. However, today has been the most unproductive Sunday I’ve had in a long time: over the past few hours I’ve watched a documentary, an indie film, Masterchef, and Top Chef Masters…back-to-back! I haven’t fried my brain this much in years! I did , however, go running this morning. That excuses my slothfulness, right?

My lack of activity today is due mostly to an exhausting week. I didn’t do anything monumentous, but oh heck, did I cook my little heart out! Check out vegan yumyum for some crazy good recipes. The Avocado Wasabi salad is incredible….and I didn’t have avocado or wasabi. Her recipe for tofu glaze is insanely tasty – best tofu I’ve ever made. The tofu bar has officially been raised. I’ll post about it when I buy more tofu and take some pictures. I actually have lots of pictures of some of the other stuff I made this week, including sun-dried tomato-stuffed mushrooms and the YUMMIEST granola ever, but they’ll just have to wait.

Today, I thought I’d follow through on a promise made in a previous post and share my basic Seitan recipe. The pronunciation for Seitan, as I’ve read and been told in a legitimate vegan restaurant, is ‘say-tan’, but that sounds too much like Satan to me, so I call it ‘see-tan’ instead. I don’t want to scare off innocent bystanders who think I’ve said something like “Satan is wonderful!” and be labeled a devil-worshipper or some nonsense. Say it however you like, or make it easy on yourself and just call it wheat meat or gluten meat. Whatever you call it, here’s how to make it.

Vital Wheat Gluten. You can find this at most health food stores. I buy mine in bulk.

I used to only use vital wheat gluten flour when making Seitan, but just a quarter cup of garbanzo flour will reduce the rubberiness of the gluten and add a meatier texture.

Nutritional yeast, a.k.a "nooch", is also available in bulk at health food stores. Nooch is da cheesy bees knees...but also vegan.

Combine water, aminos, garlic, and olive oil in another bowl, mix thoroughly, and pour over the flour mixture.

We usually buy the giant bottle of Liquid Aminos, because it's just that good. That, there next to him, is his good friend, Olive Oil.

Knead until you have an ugly, lumpy ball. If the dough seems too dry, add more water. Seitan is not picky, in fact, it’s hard to mess it up.

Form the ball into a log and cut into 1-inch cutlets.

Place cutlets in a baking dish (or 2 in my case), and cover completely with vegetable broth.

Ready to be popped into the oven. I threw some stray chopped onions in there for kicks.

Bake for about 45 minutes, flip cutlets over, and bake for another 45 – 60 minutes. Let cool and refrigerate, in broth, for up to 10 days (though I don’t know how they could possibly last that long!).

No, they're not very pretty, but they taste GREAT!

Not too difficult, right? Grill cutlets in a tiny bit of olive oil to serve plain, or grill them in 2 teaspoons of canola oil for a less healthy, but very tasty crispy version (as a treat, maybe). You can use seitan as a meat subsitute in practially any recipe, but especially in place of chicken. My favorite way to eat it is cut intofajita strips, grilled with onions and bell pepper, and served in corn tortillas with guacamole and salsa. Perfecto.

Well, not completely in the buff. Even if I had a million acres all to myself for naked running, there would be far too much jiggle goin’ on. Amusing, but not pleasant! No, I’m referring to naked feet.

As you may or may not know, I plan on running a half marathon in October. I was ready for the race last year but then hurt my knee and was out of commission for a while. I’m back to running short distances, but I still feel that worrisome twinge in my knee at times. Most running injuries occur because of stress and wear – the consistent pound, pound, pounding the pavement can really take its toll, most commonly on knees and ankles.

Because I am dead set on doing the half marathon and really, really don’t want to give up running, I’ve decided to give barefoot running a try. It’s a growing trend all over the world for lots of reasons – after all, it’s how we were made to run, isn’t it? I wasn’t born wearing a pair of Nikes. Shoes completely alter the way we run, forcing the heel to strike the ground first, which creates the jarring and pounding that puts stress on our joints. Barefoot running uses only the forefoot; there is no injury-causing heel strike at all!

I’m only walking for now. My mom and I did a shoeless half mile this morning, then I (begrudgingly) put my shoes on and ran 2.5 miles. You’re supposed to ease into the barefoot thing gradually. Because our feet are accustomed to shoes, they’re weak and need to be strengthened by walking barefoot before running. I ran a few barefoot laps up and down my driveway the other morning out of curiosity and had some foot soreness later, but I loved the “light on my toes” feeling while running – so liberating!

My driveway is DIRTY. And my feet are chubby…and I like it. Ever heard Jack Johnson sing about bubbly toes? Yup, he wrote than one for me.

I can already tell it will be difficult to train myself to run in a completely foreign way, but if it rids me of my knee problems it’s totally worth it. The only downside I can see is eventually having some tough, crusty feet. Gross. Maybe if I slather them with gobs of vaseline at night and wear socks to bed…

Have you experienced barefoot running? Would you ever be willing to try it?

Okay, so a few weeks ago I was hanging out with Becky and a few of our other friends and I mentioned that I wanted to attempt making a vegan cannoli. One of our friends asked if I would use tofu and Becky exclaimed “Tofu cannolis, that just doesn’t sound very good”. I had to agree that it didn’t sound very appetizing, but since that time I have felt the intrigue of a culinary challenge nudging me toward the kitchen in pursuit. Last week I ordered cannoli tubes and whole wheat pastry flour from Amazon and this weekend I went for it.

First off were the cannoli shells. I wasn’t quite sure how I would attempt them. Normal cannoli shells are deep fried and that, of course, is just not acceptable in a skinnyfat girl kitchen! I set my dilemma aside for a while as I put together the dough.

Cannoli Shells

4 tablespoons butter or substitute

1/3 cup sugar (I used raw sugar)

½ cup applesauce (in place of two eggs)

2 cups whole wheat pastry flour

½ teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon almond extract

I preheated the oven to 375. At this point, I decided that I was going to oil the cannoli tubes, wrap the dough around the tubes, and bake them like that in the oven.

I assembled the shells and baked them for about 20-30 minutes until the edges were slightly golden. I let the shells cool before removing the cannoli tubes.

Now it was time for the real challenge, the filling. Normal cannoli filling is made with ricotta cheese and while I don’t have a personal aversion to ricotta cheese, this was my tofu challenge. I must admit, my feet were shaking in their socks, but I am pretty pleased with the result.

Mocha-Tofu Delight

1 package silken tofu

½ cup milk or substitute

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/8 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 tablespoons ground coffee (I used Kona coffee)

Mix all the ingredients together with a hand mixer. Try a sample before putting them in the shells and you will be amazed. The ground coffee makes all the difference. I would eat this by itself !

Now all you have to do is put the filling into the shells and there you have it, vegan tofu cannolis! I topped mine with melted bittersweet chocolate, chocolate chips (not necessary, but pretty), coconut, and whipped cream. Amore!

If this isn't love, I don't know what is!

Okay, so I know these pictures make you want to make these right now! So what if you don’t want to go to all the trouble of buying cannoli shells? I would just make the dough into small round shapes, bake them, and make cannoli cookie sandwiches. If you are scared of tofu, I’m sure that this recipe would work with the traditional ricotta cheese as well. So take a chance and get baking! It will be worth it, I promise!

Additionally, I must inform you that I tried the recipe Becky posted for the Chocolate Chip Beany Blondies (in the “Beans with bananas, please” post) and was completely and utterly floored! Delicious! The garbanzos really scared me since they are such a prominent part of the recipe (they also didn’t smell so great before putting them in the oven). However, once they are baked, they are magnificent!

So I started this morning with a mission in mind. I was out of bed, eyes half shut, stumbling into my kitchen. I pulled out my food processor, garbanzos, zucchini, and corn husks. Sleepily, I drained the garbanzos and dumped them into the food processor and ground them up. After pouring them into my bright red mixing bowl, I chopped up the zucchini and ground them up in the food processor and then the real process began. It is now 2:00 in the afternoon and my entire day has been spent in the kitchen, all so I can give to you, my very own….

Skinny Piggies in a Blanket!!!

The Piggies

½ can drained garbanzos (or beans of your choice) ground in a blender or food processor

1 zucchini ground in a blender or food processor

1 cup vital gluten flour (I buy mine in bulk from Amazon because I use it so much)

2 tablespoons garlic powder

1 tablespoon favorite general seasoning (I use Adobo)

2 tablespoons teriyaki or soy sauce

1 teaspoon chili powder

Mix all ingredients together and form into sausages.

For my first batch I wrapped my sausages in corn husks and tied the edges with tooth floss. While this looks really cool…

…it turned out to be totally unnecessary. After all this I had to take an OOP (Overnight Oats Parfait) break, which are just as amazing as Becky described.

After you form all your batter into sausages, bake them at 400 degrees on your oiled cookie sheet (or pizza pan, in my case) for about 20-30 minutes. The sausages should be cooked all the way through before you remove them from the oven.

The Blanket

2 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

4 tablespoons melted butter (or your favorite substitute. I personally have started using Land Lakes butter because it only had three ingredients as opposed to Smart Balance’s fifty)

¾ cup milk (any substitute is fine, as long as it’s not super sweet)

Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until you have a firm, but pliable dough.

Putting It All Together

Roll portions of dough into long noodles. Cut a piece of cheese and put it on top of your piggy and then wind the dough around.

Once you’ve put them all together, bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes until dough is cooked.

All that’s left is for you to enjoy them! Yum!

Check out all that joy I have to look forward to in the next couple days.

That’s right, you heard me: I eat garbanzos with bananas. Are you sufficiently grossed out or are you brave enough to give it a chance? I didn’t create this recipe (that crown goes to Katie), but it’s such a miracle that I can’t help but share it with all of you.

I am currently going through a dangerous phase of my life, in which all I think about is making dessert…and then eating it. But Katie, God bless her, has come to my rescue. Her blog is devoted to healthy desserts and I’ve already made several of her recipes, including the one below, which reminds me of Chili’s 1,600-calorie Chocolate Chip Paradise Pie given a serious health makeover. It does have some brown sugar, but you’ve gotta sweeten it somehow – it’s dessert, after all! I subbed in some stevia, but I have read that too much stevia can result in a bad flavor, so I didn’t use much. Next time I think I’ll try equal parts brown sugar, agave, and stevia.

I substituted only a few ingredients. The original recipe can be found here.

Beany Blondies

1 can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed

3/4 tsp baking powder

1/8 tsp baking soda

1/8 tsp salt

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/2 t stevia

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/4 cup ground flax

2 T canola oil

2 T applesauce

1/2 cup chocolate chips (I used grain-sweetened – very healthy!)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Blend all ingredients (except chips) until very smooth. Mix in chips, and scoop into a greased 8 x 8 pan. Bake for about 40 minutes.

That’s all there is to it – simple, right? Easy and quick. Blend the ingredients and let it bake while you make dinner, and you’ll have a warm treat ready after you’re done eating.

Remember the banana soft serve I was raving about? If y’all forgot, you simply throw a frozen banana in the blender and it turns into ice cream goodness. I top my warm beany blondie with a scoop of that banana bliss, chopped almonds, and shredded coconut (obviously). Perfection!

Look at this cute little guy! More tasty than cute, though.

Enjoy the gooeyness! Mmmmm...

I scream, you scream, we all scream for frozen bananas?

Yup, I liked it in all its melty glory.

You know you wanna try them now. I’ve always loved legumes, but what you’ve just witnessed is probably my most enjoyable bean experience to date. Come on, be bold! Besides, you need the fiber. Get bakin’, and I want to hear all about it!

Happy Sunday! My plans for a lazy, relaxing Sunday have flown out the window, never to be seen again, but I’m enjoying the day, nonetheless. I spent a few hours running errands with mi madre earlier – Starbucks, carwash, grocery shopping. I’ve been cooking and cleaning since I got back home, so I figure I’m due for a little break.

I’ve got a nice plate of asparagus to snack on and leftover chimichurri sauce to dip it into. Scrumptuosity. Asparagus is SO tasty, healthy, and easy to make! Coat them with a little olive oil, sprinkle with fresh lime juice and salt, pop those babies in the oven on a cookie sheet for 15 – 20 minutes, and you’re good to go. Mmm mmm good!

Yes, I realize that the blob of green sludge doesn’t exactly look appetizing, but it tastes delicious. And anyway, this post is not about chimichurri (if it were, I would have found a way to make it look beautiful), its about…drumroll please…

Overnight Oats. A favorite topic with healthy foodie bloggers (especially Angela at www.ohsheglows.com, who has a bajillion overnight oats recipes), I decided I had to try them for myself to see what all the fuss was about. Oats make oatmeal. Plain, old, boring oatmeal. I mean, they’re just oats,right?

Oh, but friend, they’re so much more than justoats – they’re overnight oats. Overnight oats have mounds of delicious ingredients. They’re fancy and fabulous and could never, ever be boring, no matter how hard they tried. Overnight oats are so darn good that it’s sometimes hard for me to sleep at night when I know I’ll get to eat them in the morning. The real kicker – and you wouldn’t believe it by looking at them – is that they’re actually healthy! This giant-ice-cream-sundae-looking delicacy is good for you and a power breakfast that will fuel your whole day!

So now you’re undoubtedly wondering what they are and how to make them. Let me show ya. I used one of the recipes from www.ohsheglows.com for my first batch, but I tweaked it a little bit for my taste and added some extras after that.

By morning the oats will have absorbed a lot of the milk, so they will be thicker. The oats will be just one layer of your delicious breakfast parfait. For the other layers, I used these ingredients:

An important part of the deliciousness of your overnight oats parfait experience is banana soft serve. I don’t know how I never knew about this before, as I’ve frozen many a banana, but it definitely has changed my life. Just blend up a frozen banana and it basically becomes ice cream. There’s another layer.

This banana could actually use a tiny bit more blending, but you get the idea…

Layer number three is probably my favorite of all. Whisk the following ingredients together:

1 T peanut butter
1 T soy milk
1 tsp. cocoa
1 tsp. agave nectar

Voila! Chocolate peanut butter sauce! I just kinda make up those measurements in my head just now, because I didn’t actually measure them out when I made it. Play around with it; you may like it sweeter, thicker, or peanut buttery-er. That’s the beauty of overnight oats. They’re customizable. There are countless options and variations. There’s no one way….okay, okay, back to the recipe.

After that, the other layers are whatever you happen to have lying around. I had strawberries, so I chopped those up and – BOOM- another glorious layer of parfait heaven. I slivered some almonds and threw those on there. Don’t forget shredded coconut! Elesha gave me a couple bags of organic shredded coconut and now I am a COMPLETE addict. I’m putting it on everything: overnight oats, smoothies, banana soft serve, lentils…you get the picture (okay, maybe not on my lentils).

My first overnight oat parfait wasn’t so fancy – I hadn’t experimented with the chocolate peanut butter sauce yet. I stuck to the basics, but it was definitely still yum. Yum enough that I had to make it again the next morning. And the next. And the next. The third day I made two – one for me and one for the hubs.

Overnight Oat Parfait #1

OOP #2. As you can see, this one got a lot fancier.

6:45 am: OOP #2 and I watch the sunrise together.

Twin OOPs on day 3. These had an additional goody: blackberries!

Can you see why I’m so giddy about this? Those look straight up like ice cream sundaes, don’t they?? But they’re good for you – you’re getting healthy carbs (oats, fruit), protein (oats, milk, protein powder, nuts), fat (nuts), and fresh fruit all in one delicious and beautiful package. Breakfast just got so much better. I’m sold.

I just stocked up on groceries and can’t wait to try out blueberries, cherries, and cashew butter sauce in my next parfait. I’ll bet you have some delicious toppings sitting in your fridge and cabinet right now. So what are you waiting for? Go whip up some overnight oats and let me know how you like ’em! Go!

So, what could two skinnyfat girls, such as ourselves, possibly find to do on a warm Memorial Day? Laundry? Dishes? Jog 20 miles just for the heck of it? Well, yes, but we didn’t! What did we do? PICNIC!!!

Skewering the devil out of the pineapple.

I arrived at Becky’s new house early in the afternoon with two huge bags of supplies. Becky and I chopped and peeled piles of delicious produce. When the chopping commensed, I slid pineapple, bell peppers, mushrooms, and tofu chunks onto skewers and Becky whipped up a scrumptious chimichurri sauce to dip the kebabs in.

Then it was time to move all the food outside to the tables and fire up the grill.

We worked off all that fantastic food with four games of Capture the Flag. So much fun! When the sun went down, we started a bonfire and roasted corn, potatoes, and marshmallows. It was the best Memorial Day picnic ever!